Senate, do your duty

Over the last eight years, the South Carolina House of Representatives has during five sessions considered a school-choice bill that would financially reward parents who send their children to private school or school them at home.

Earlier measures were defeated and without delay, despite pressure from Gov. Mark Sanford, who first raised the issue in 2004, and despite out-of-state lobbying efforts and money that poured into campaign funds to target lawmakers who support public education.

The fifth time was the charm for school-choice advocates, with the House earlier this week passing a measure 65 to 49 that would give private-school parents a $4,000 tax deduction per child for tuition paid, $2,000 for home-school expenses and $1,000 per child who attends a public school outside the district where the family resides.

Tax credits would also be available for people who want to further dismantle public education — and improve their own taxes — by donating to scholarship groups.

The change would benefit families who want a choice in how they educate their children, with that choice being in private school or at home, say advocates. We support parental decisions in that regard.

But taxpayers shouldn't be forced to foot the bill.

If it passes a House procedural vote, the bill will head to the South Carolina Senate, where a nearly identical bill has already been introduced. We encourage senators in both parties to defeat the bill quickly and decisively.

If it makes it into law, the House bill is estimated to reduce state revenues by $37 million in its first year alone. And after several years of cuts to public education — and the travesty of legislation that is Act 388, enacted when lawmakers also catered to special interests — our state can ill afford even more money diverted from public schools.

Opponents to the measure maintain that such legislation is being pushed by out-of-state money — primarily that of New York resident Howard Rich — supplementing S.C. political campaigns ($2 million over the last decade) to defeat incumbents who don't support diverting public money into private education.

Could it finally have come to this in South Carolina, that lawmakers are more concerned with their own political futures than those of our state's children and that of our state overall?

This legislation will do nothing except further hamstring efforts to foster an education system that works, as it should, for all of South Carolina's children, not just a few.

A good education system goes far beyond the classroom and makes its own mark on economic development efforts, furthering a sense of pride and transforming communities and the people who live there — even those who have never had a child in a South Carolina school.

House Republicans also killed amendments that would have brought accountability to private and home-school situations, including one that would have required audits of scholarship-granting groups and public reporting of "scholarships awarded, amounts given and to which schools," according to The Associated Press.

It was yet one more demonstration of contempt for public education.

And it's time the people of this state let the lawmakers responsible know we've about had our fill of such examples.